Herman Hesse, The Journey to the East
A short book with some interesting ideas. For instance, is it necessary to abandon a group or belief and rediscover it in order to participate fully in it? Hesse calls this despair, and says that “Depair is the result of each earnest attempt to go through life with virtue, justice and understanding.... Children live on one side of despair, the awakened on the other side.” He asks if it necessary to serve in order to live long, in the way that artists give themselves up into their work and mothers into their children. Also, he questions the possibility of discovering the truth of an event of the past. When each participant has their own memories and perspective, can any of them be considered true? I happen to believe that there is indeed one true, objective reality, but I'm not sure that it matters when there is no way of determining what it is. Furthermore, of course, in any sufficiently complex happening, the quantity of detail requires a summarizing and organizing which cannot be wholly objective.
I don't think I saw the same connection between this book and Ken Kesey that Tom Wolfe discusses in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. There is the fundamental split between believers and non-believers, but in The Journey to the East we learn almost nothing about the believers, whereas Wolfe goes far to initiating us into Kesey's circle. And there is the mythical journey to the East, but we learn almost nothing about that either. The cult of personality seems weaker in Hesse's novel. Yes, the narrator's companions became divided and bitter without the servant Leo, but there seems more to the League than his leadership. Still, it is an interesting parallel, and I think that I would view The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test more critically if I were to reread it after finishing this book.